Viktor Frankl’s masterpiece Man's Search for Meaning has been translated in close to twenty languages. English editions have sold more than 2.5 million copies. Frankl appears chagrined by his own success and when interviewed about the phenomenal sales of his book, he must speak the truth: That his book’s robust sales are, Frankl explains in his book’s Preface, “an expression of the misery of our time: if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.”
Reading Frank’s Preface, it becomes clear that he had no intention to be successful or famous or rich from writing his book. To the contrary, his original intent was to publish his book anonymously. Only at the “urging” of his friends, did he at the last minute put his name on the book. His desire to be anonymous was rooted in his “absolute conviction” that literary fame would obscure the purity of his objective: “that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones.” It ended up being both “strange and remarkable” to Frankl that the one book that he deliberately wanted to be published anonymously ended up being the one book that would become a huge success.
The success was not the aim. The aim was to be meaningful and to write about something that was born of necessity. Frankl learned this lesson and felt compelled to share this wisdom with his students. He would repeatedly say to them, “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success; you have to let it happen by not caring about it.” He concludes by telling his students that “success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.”
People who care too much about success--much to their detriment--were the subject of today's 89.3 KPCC radio show Air Talk. Host Larry Mantle interviewed Carl Honore, who discussed his book Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting. Honore talked about tunnel-visioned parents who are so hell-bent on their children's success that they both coddle and bully their children into becoming extensions of their own narcissistic selves. These parents accompany their children to job interviews. When an adult child is reprimanded at work the parent will call the supervisor to complain of "harsh treatment," as if the employer is equivalent to a school. Honore said these parents have an all-or-nothing view of success: Either my child goes to Yale or he is homeless under a bridge." He spoke of this binary code of base one or zero. Also he is fatigued of going to social events and the only conversation is about how people's children are doing. Such a narrow definition of success will inevitably result in an emotional crash. I imagine these children will someday feel a "burning under their fingernails" and pick up a copy of Viktor Frankl's book.
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